Researcher and angel investor Qiao Wang warns that the user experience (UX) of decentralized financial applications is too sophisticated for mass adoption. This fact could be crucial for the progress of the segment.
Wrong direction
Mr. Wang explained that the decentralized financial applications sphere is moving in the direction of complexity. Too complex and obscure instruments may deter retail users and slow down the adoption of DeFi. As a result, the engineers and marketers behind DeFi apps should reconsider their approach, in his view.
Worried that Defi is moving towards a direction of complexity/obscurity which will scare people away. Fine if the goal is the build games for a small inner circle, but if the goal is to bank the unbanked, better build simple products and speak a language normal ppl understand.
—Qiao Wang (@QWQiao) July 26, 2020
Instead of building "games for a small circle," app teams should switch their efforts to "banking the unbanked"—building simple products and speaking with customers in a language that can be understood by average people.
Investor, analyst and advisor Dovey Wan, founding partner of Primitive Ventures, also highlighted the specific manner of DeFi adoption. According to Wan, "mass adoption" is nowhere in sight and this narrative should be avoided in the decentralized finances segment:
In Defi, instead of 'mass adoption,' maybe 'whales adoption' or 'ETH chad adoption' are better narratives for the community to set the expectation right.
To illustrate this opinion, she recalled that decentralized exchanges' net trading volume surged 70% in June 2020, while the number of users has collapsed.
Big paradigm shift
Some leading DeFis are already building more comfortable user interfaces to bootstrap DeFi's adoption by retail users. For instance, Yearn.Finance, the aggregator of DeFi liquidity and "yield farming" strategies, teased that a new interface will be released soon.
As covered by CryptoComes recently, Andre Cronje, the developer of Yearn.Finance, claimed that the new version will support LINK, LEND, REN, SNX and wBTC.
The native token of the Yearn.Finance aggregator, YFI, gained almost 10,000% in one week. On a local high, its price has broken above $4,000—despite the team stressing that the token has no value and will not be listed on exchanges. Only the FTX derivatives trading platform offered YFI/USD contracts to let traders benefit from its enormous price performance.
